Viewers of NBC’s Olympics coverage through February 20, 2010 preferred ads with an Olympics theme, according to data from The Nielsen Company.

Six of the 10 most-liked ads contained an Olympics theme. The ads, aired by Visa, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, and Procter & Gamble, included either a direct mention to the Olympics or imagery alluding to the games. As it turns out, American TV viewers like their Olympics—even in the commercials they watch.

A Nielsen survey asking Olympics viewers about commercials aired during NBC’s primetime Olympic coverage through February 20 shows that six of the 10 most liked ads contained an Olympics theme. The ads, aired by Visa, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, and Procter & Gamble, included either a direct mention to the Olympics or imagery alluding to the games.

Digital Coupon Redemption Value Beats Newspapers

According to statistics from Coupons.com, the Grocery iQ smartphone app grew 170% in value during 2009 to more than $858 million. By comparison, growth measures for newspaper coupon value last year ranged from 8%  to 16%. As a result, says the report, redemption values on its digital offering outstripped the increase in newspaper-based coupons by more than 10 to 1.

Steven Boal, Coupons.com CEO, said “[....] for the first time in almost two decades the use of coupons increased in 2009 [....] due (in part) to the growth of digital coupons [....] more consumers made them part of their shopping routine.”

Video Email On Rise In 2010, Study Reveals

Marketers will pay more attention to video email, social media integration and the war to unclutter the inbox this year. About 64% of the 200 email marketers who participated in the study plan to use video email marketing in 2010—up from nearly 12% last year, according to a study Implix will release Monday.

More than 65% of marketers participating in the study believe video emails can have a moderate or significant influence on conversion rates. And more than half of responders claim that video emails can increase click-through rates and drive customers onto landing pages. Only 4.7% of email marketers do not see any benefits from using video emails.

When it comes to different uses of video email by small businesses, nearly 29% consider training courses the most effective use of video email, followed by product demonstrations, 22%; product offers, 19%; and customer testimonials, nearly 18%, respectively.

Open a browser window and type in a URL. It’s simple enough, but more often than not, people rely on search engines to find exactly what they need. And the keyword search terms tell the paid-search ad-serving platform the type of targeted advertisement to present.

But typing a Web site address into the browser and landing on a page might not make the searcher’s intent as apparent as typing a search term into the keyword query box. So, both search and display campaigns must work together to provide marketers the biggest return on investment.

Marketers know this, but apparently most don’t bother to tap into agencies and technologies that allow them to not only measure the benefits, but also connect media allocation to unify campaigns, according to Didit Chief Executive Officer Kevin Lee.

iTunes Breaks 10 Billion Song Downloads

It’s official: Apple has broken the 10 billion song barrier. Just a few minutes ago, Apple’s song download counter hit the mark, something it has been counting down to for the last two weeks.

Apple has been hitting some nice milestones recently. Just last month, Apple’s app store surpassed three billion downloads, a massive feat especially when you consider that iTunes has also been around longer than the app store.

The 10 billion mark is an important reminder of just how powerful Apple has become in the music industry, though. That’s billions in revenue that Apple has generated for the music industry, but also billions that Apple has pocketed for itself. And while digital competitors have popped up, none have come close to Apple’s music dominance.

Yahoo Cozies Up With Twitter

Yahoo on Wednesday will announce a global partnership with Twitter to integrate real-time search. As part of Yahoo’s Open Strategy to make the Web more open, people will have the ability to update their Twitter status and share content from Yahoo in their Twitter stream.

The integration follows similar moves by Google and Microsoft Bing, as well as Yahoo’s agreement with Facebook in December. The deal allows Facebook users to share content from Yahoo sites with friends, such as comments on Flickr and Yahoo News.

Integrating Facebook and Twitter into Yahoo’s sites allows anyone with a Yahoo ID to post status updates to multiple social networks simultaneously. Being signed into the network also lets Yahoo serve up relevant content specific to each person as they travel across news, sports, finance and other properties.

Google launched the next generation of ad-serving technology Monday in an effort to continually improve ad-serving. DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) will come in two versions: a pay version for larger publishers that require more options, and a free version for smaller publishers with simple needs that replaces Google Ad Manager.

Written on Google technology, the upgraded version of DFP offers publishers a new way to serve ads. The completely redesigned interface aims to save time and reduce errors. Detailed reporting and forecasting data give publishers tools to help them understand where revenue originates and what ads are most valuable with more than 4,000 data points in reports. And sophisticated algorithms should improve ad performance and delivery.

Study: Amazon Most Trusted Brand In U.S.

Amazon.com is the top-performing brand in the U.S. based on two key branding criteria—trust and recommendations, according to a new study by market research firm Millward Brown. Trailing closely behind Amazon were FedEx, Downey, Huggies and Tide. The only other Internet-only brand in the top 10 was WebMD, at No. 8.

In its study titled, Beyond Trust: Engaging Consumers in the Post-Recession World, Millward Brown used a new metric dubbed “TrustR” to determine the top-performing brands. It’s calculated by looking at consumer responses to the questions “how trustworthy is this brand?” and “would you recommend this brand?” The scores are indexed and combined to come up with a TrustR score, with the average being 100. Scores for the top 10 ranged from 123 for Amazon to 118 for UPS.

Consumers Seek Brand Meaning

In 2010, US consumers will purchase meaningful, “real” brands, according to Robert Passikoff, founder and president of Brand Keys.

Passikoff analyzed the results of the recent 2010 Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Engagement Index and found that a real brand can provide meaningful differentiation and act as a surrogate for value, but that value is being carefully examined, category-by-category, and purchase-by-purchase. In terms of retail trends and consumer spending, the leverage of brand has reached its highest level of consequence since the 1960s.

Email Marketing Metrics Improve in Q4

North American email marketers saw an increase in both open and click rates in Q4 2009 compared to the same period in 2008, according to Epsilon’s recently released Q4 2009 North America Email Trends and Benchmarks Report.

In general, open rates remain strong at 22%, increasing 5.3% from Q4 2008. The average click rate was 5.9%, up slightly from 5.8% the previous year. Not surprisingly, during the high-volume holiday season, the average email volume per client increased 25.8% from Q3 2009 and was up 9.8% from Q4 2008.

Google has reached another milestone in it’s relatively short history and surpassed Coca Cola, Microsoft and IBM to become the second most valuable brand in the world.

The search engine is valued at $36.1billion and considered a more powerful product than the planet’s best-selling soft drink ($34.8bn), say analysts Brand Finance.

But for the second year running both are behind retailer Wal-Mart, the supermarket giant, which is worth $41.3bn. Google, which has risen in the table from number five to number two, shares top ten status with other technology brands including IBM (4), Microsoft (5) and HP (9). GE, HSBC, Vodafone and Toyota complete the top ten.

Poor Customer Service Costs Companies $83 Billion Annually

Genesys, with research firm Greenfield Online and Datamonitor/Ovum analysts, measuring the cost of poor customer service in the U.S., found that enterprises in the U.S. lose an estimated $83 billion each year due to defections and abandoned purchases as a direct result of a poor experience. Nearly two-thirds of consumers said they had ended a relationship due to customer service alone. The survey participants said that when they end a relationship, 61% of the time they take their business to a competitor.

Facebook Is Web’s New No. 2

Facebook has replaced Yahoo as the second-largest U.S. Web property and is closing in on No. 1 Google, according to the latest data from Web analytics firm Compete. The social network in January drew an audience of nearly 134 million unique visitors, surging past Yahoo’s 132 million. Google remained the top site, with a monthly audience of 148 million. (Google overtook Yahoo as No. 1 in Feb. 2008).

ComScore’s estimate of Facebook’s audience isn’t quite as large. Its latest figures show Facebook doubling its audience in 2009 to 112 million, but still ranked fourth behind Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Compete’s methodology includes reliance on a panel of 2 million U.S. Internet users selected as a representative cross-section of the population. ComScore also uses a panel of 2 million, but half its members are outside the U.S.

Comcast Changes Name To Xfinity, Customers Don’t Care

Comcast, the biggest cable provider in the United States, is changing its name. According to the company’s blog, Xfinity will now replace Comcast as the company’s new product name in an attempt to show customers that it’s not the ”same old company,” but rather an innovator. That could be a tough sell considering the company’s current reputation as a behemoth with terrible customer service.

If Xfinity sounds familiar, it’s because Comcast used the name back in December when it announced the launch of Fancast Xfinity TV, providing the internet TV platform a host of popular TV shows, including The Simpsons and The Sopranos. The company actually announced the name change on its blog last week, but is only making a big publicity push for it now.

Online video viewing accelerated in 2009, with 19% more people in the US viewing more videos for longer periods of time, according to comScore Video Metrix data from the comScore 2009 US Digital Year in Review.

In December 2009, 86% of the total US online population, or 178 million people, viewed video content, compared to 150 million people in December 2008. Americans also viewed a significantly higher number of videos in 2009 compared to the prior year, due to both increased content consumption and a growing number of video ads being delivered.

Facebook Users Spend 7 Hours Monthly On The Site

In a monthly view of U.S. Internet activity for top parent companies and web brands, The Nielsen Company found that the average time users spend using Facebook per month grew nearly 10%, topping seven hours. Additionally, the number of those actively using the web grew 3.8%, to slightly more than 203 million users.

HP Becomes Quick-Change Paid Search Artist For President’s Day

Hewlett-Packard typically runs President’s Day paid search and display ad campaigns, but this year Catherine Paschkewitz, director of marketing for HP Direct, tried something a bit different: She bought broader keyword terms, with the ability to change the message frequently.

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Evidently, large companies like HP tend to shy away from purchasing broad-keyword terms. Instead they focus on tightly targeted words, such as product names and codes. Specific product terms tend to convert quicker. Marketers believe someone typing in “HP laptop” into a search box is more likely ready to make the purchase.